Homecoming (17 page)

‘The square keeps distracting me,’ Eleanor Levine said. ‘I read a bit, then find myself staring out at the garden or watching the playground.’

‘Me too,’ said Connie. ‘It’s addictive, looking on to the square. Whole scenes unfold in front of your eyes like a movie.’

‘Exactly,’ said Eleanor, looking impressed. ‘I can see you’re a kindred spirit. I spend altogether too much time watching my neighbours. I’ve never done it before, but here, I seem to look out every five minutes. I expect the cops to turn up any day to arrest me for stalking.’

Connie laughed. ‘Golden Square lends itself to people-watching. I didn’t look out the front window once when I lived at home, and I come from a small town where it’s almost an Olympic sport. But that’s more…’ she searched for the right the word ‘…
nosey
looking out. What we do here is watching with interest.’

‘That’s good,’ Eleanor agreed. ‘
Watching with interest.
Shall I make coffee and you can tell me what you watch with interest?’

‘I can make the coffee for you?’ offered Connie, suddenly realising she’d come to help her elderly neighbour and she wouldn’t be much help if she sat down and let the old lady do everything.

‘I’m fine on my feet today,’ Eleanor said with a wry smile. ‘I have, as you might have noticed, bad days when I use the stick, but today my aches and pains are manageable. Thank you for my letter and the cookies.’

‘Ah.’ Connie waved her hand. ‘They’re only a token to welcome you.’

‘It’s very neighbourly of you to visit with me, Connie. I haven’t had many visitors so far.’

Eleanor led her into the kitchen and Connie sat on a stool at the counter and watched as she ground coffee beans and put them in the coffeemaker.

‘Tell me about yourself,’ Eleanor went on. ‘I’ve seen from your piles of books that you’re a teacher. What do you teach?’

‘History.’

‘That must be exciting.’

‘It is, I love it. Although, it’s not without its hard days. Teaching, that is. There are days when nobody wants to learn and you don’t really want to teach any more. Then sometimes you get the kid who wants to learn.’

‘I know, the ones with the spark in them,’ breathed Eleanor, her blue eyes so very bright.

They were, Connie decided, a young woman’s eyes, full of vitality, staring out of this lovely old face.

‘Did you teach?’ she asked, because Eleanor clearly knew what she was talking about.

‘For a time. I’m a psychoanalyst and I did a little teaching here and there.’

‘Wow.’ It was Connie’s turn to be impressed. She sat up straighter on her stool.

‘You’re doing it,’ Eleanor said, and turned back to the coffee. ‘When people hear what I do, they sit up straight. Some people think I’m going to start analysing them on the basis of how they hold their wine glass. Others jump right in and tell me how they’ve been feeling down since their pet died and they divorced their husband, and do I think therapy would help, because they’re on medication and it’s not really working.’

Connie laughed. ‘I suppose it’s like meeting someone who is a hairdresser and your hand instantly reaches up to your hair and you start making excuses. “I meant to wash it today but I didn’t have time, and it looks better than this normally, honestly!”’

‘That’s it,’ Eleanor replied.

‘I guess the psychoanalyst version of that is “I’ve been meaning to do some work on my ego, but my subconscious won’t let me.”’ Connie suddenly wondered if that made sense. Were the ego and the subconscious the same thing? She’d never got the hang of psychology. ‘Are you working while you’re here?’ she asked, changing the subject rapidly.

‘I’ve retired.’ Eleanor said it with a finality that put an end to that conversation as she placed cups on the counter and poured the coffee. ‘Sugar or cream?’

‘Both,’ said Connie.

They talked about the people Eleanor saw from her window.

She was fascinated by the tawny-haired woman who lived with her husband in the tall white house opposite and called her ‘pet’ in the tearooms.

‘That’s Rae Kerrigan and her husband’s Will. She runs the tearooms and works for Community Cares. She’s fantastic. I don’t know her that well, but she has a kind word for everybody. Goodness shines out of her.’ Connie stopped. ‘I know that sounds strange, but it does. When I meet her in the tearooms, I feel warm and healed, somehow. Too much caffeine, probably!’

Uses humour as armour, Eleanor noticed. A powerful protection, and one that was just as hard to break through as people who used bitterness as a shield.

Eleanor stifled the urge to ask what Connie’s feelings of warmth felt like and what sadness the warmth was healing? This was a new neighbour, not a patient.

‘What is Community Cares?’ she asked instead.

‘It’s a charity that takes care of people in need: underprivileged families, people who’ve lost their jobs. Most of the people who work at local level are volunteers.’

‘I see,’ said Eleanor. ‘Can’t be easy work.’

‘I doubt it,’ Connie replied and sighed. ‘I’ve often thought I should do something like that, but I’ve never actually got round to doing it.’

She didn’t say that she’d put off talking to Rae about Community Cares because somehow working for the charity seemed to symbolise putting aside her own hopes and dreams.

In her hometown on the east coast, women got involved in charity work after they’d reared their children. You gave back to society when your little ones had grown up. It would seem too much like giving up on the idea of Connie having her own family if she started doing that now.

‘Two doors down from Rae is Prudence,’ she said, moving on, ‘and trust me, she does not make you feel warm when you see her. She’s got short dark hair, is very keen on a pale blue anorak that she wears no matter what the season and has a scowl that would turn the milk sour, as my granny, Enid, would say.’

‘I love those old sayings,’ Eleanor said. ‘My mother had a store of them and I can’t quite recall them all. I’ve seen Prudence.’ Short, thin and walked in a furtive manner, Eleanor thought. Like someone who was always running fearfully.

‘She’s a total cow. Was very rude to Megan, who’s staying with her aunt, Nora Flynn, at the end of this row. Megan’s an actress and she was in the papers over something.’ Loyalty forbade Connie to say more about Megan than this.

Connie had felt stupid for not knowing who Megan was, but proud of how kindly Nicky had handled the matter that evening at dinner in their house.

‘We’ll find a nice Irish guy for you,’ Nicky told Megan firmly. ‘Someone with no strings attached who will worship you like the goddess you are.’

Megan had half-laughed and half-cried.

‘And who is this Megan?’ Eleanor asked.

Connie considered how to answer this. Megan wasn’t the sort of person who could be confined to a one-line answer. Connie could see precisely how outsiders might see Megan merely as a starlet who’d snared a famous movie star, but she reckoned that the situation was more complicated than this. Even though she assumed that horrific publicity and having to hide would undoubtedly have affected even the hardest person, Connie instinctively felt there was a deeper vulnerability to Megan.

‘Megan Bouchier. I don’t know if you’ve heard of her. She’s mid-twenties, very beautiful – almost unreal looking, actually, like that Afghan girl who was on the cover of
National Geographic
all those years ago: haunted green eyes and a gorgeous face. She used to be blonde but now her hair is short, very dark. You might have seen her walking her aunt’s dogs, a greyhound and a fluffy little white dog.’

‘Yes,’ said Eleanor. ‘I’ve seen her. I’d like to meet her, and your sister.’

Talking to Connie, it came to Eleanor that perhaps meeting people was the answer. She’d spent far too long here in the apartment, alone with her thoughts.

‘We’ll fix it up,’ said Connie, pleased.

Eleanor poured more coffee.

‘Who’s the nice-looking man who lives next door in the basement apartment?’

Connie looked confused. ‘Which man?’

Eleanor smiled inwardly. She was pretty sure Connie was unattached, unlike her sister who was obviously dating that sweet young man. And yet Connie hadn’t even noticed the not unattractive guy next door. Tallish, well-built and with close-shorn reddish gold hair. Although he rarely smiled when he was alone, when he was with his daughter, a skinny little girl with the same colour hair, his smile would break any woman’s heart. ‘Red hair and he’s got a daughter.’ She couldn’t say definitely that he was single, but the only women she’d noticed seemed to be other parents ferrying the girl home.

‘Oh yes, I’ve seen them,’ Connie remembered without much interest. He always looked a bit distracted and hadn’t noticed Connie. ‘I don’t think they can have lived there long. A year or two maybe.’

Eleanor couldn’t help herself: she had to dig deeper.

‘Nicky’s dating someone, isn’t she? How about you?’

‘Nicky’s seeing Freddie and I’m available,’ said Connie lightly.

‘OK.’ Eleanor paused. Years of practice had made her an expert at emotional archaeology: the trick was the correct question and a neutral tone of voice. ‘Were you married before?’

‘No, nearly married.’ Connie fiddled with her coffee cup restlessly. ‘We split up. Probably just as well,’ she said, without conviction. ‘I’m better off without him.’

Again said without conviction, Eleanor thought. It was as if Connie was repeating what everyone else had said to her but she didn’t really believe it.

‘This way, I can look for the perfect man,’ Connie added lightly.

Definitely said without conviction, Eleanor thought.

‘Love is never where you think it is,’ she agreed. ‘Research suggests that lots of people meet their partner at work.’

Connie grinned. ‘Not an option for me, unless they sack most of the teachers and hire new ones. Besides, there’s more to life than a man.’

Ah,
thought Eleanor. She loved it when her instincts were right.

‘Of course,’ she said neutrally. ‘Family, career –’

Connie’s sweet open face fell and Eleanor felt a moment’s doubt. What was she
doing
? She wasn’t here to analyse people who dropped her mail off for her. But she was so sad and lonely, and this was the only thing she knew. It was a little exploration, that’s all…

‘You must love your job.’

‘I do,’ Connie said slowly. ‘I didn’t make a choice, if that’s what you’re thinking. The fabulous career as a trade-off for no personal life. It just happened.’

‘Most people don’t make that choice, per se,’ Eleanor said. She would never have said such a thing in an actual session, but then this wasn’t an actual session. ‘We find ourselves doing things because of old scripts we’ve never let go of.’ How to summarise all this easily? ‘The man you think you’re better off without, he’s had an effect on you and your choices.’

‘You mean him leaving me affected me more than I think?’

Eleanor nodded. She drank some of her coffee, let the caffeine flow into her. She loved coffee but it no longer loved her. More than two cups a day and her sleeping patterns went awry, and she ended up awake in the middle of the night. The philosopher Sartre had hated three o’clock in the morning. She hated it too. In the middle of the night, failure and sadness came to roost in her mind.

‘I have a list,’ Connie said suddenly. ‘It’s a bit silly. Actually, it’s totally silly. I do it for fun because I’m not going to ever meet a man like the one on the list. It’s a list of criteria for the perfect man. First requirement is, he has to be tall.’

‘Why is that so important?’

‘Because men don’t like women who are taller than them.’

‘Don’t they?’ Eleanor had a way of asking questions that bounced the need to reply right back at a person, a bit like playing tennis. ‘Why do you think that?’

‘They don’t, though, do they?’ Connie said weakly. ‘I’ve never met a man who was with a woman taller than he was. Well,’ she considered, ‘Keith, my ex-fiancé, he was just the same height as me and I could never wear heels with him. Not that I’m a great one for high shoes – they hurt, don’t they? – but he didn’t like me being taller, you see…’

Eleanor let the silence lie there comfortably for a while.

‘Maybe not all men are like Keith?’ Connie said finally.

‘Probably not,’ agreed Eleanor.

‘Maybe I’ve made the list too precise so that nobody can ever live up to it?’ Connie didn’t know why she was telling Eleanor all this, but she was, and Eleanor seemed to understand what she was talking about without being emotionally involved. It wasn’t like discussing it with Nicky (too young and happy) or Sylvie (too in love) or even Gaynor, her married friend (too exhausted from endless cooking and childcare). Eleanor seemed to like talking about deep things and she had such an interesting overview. Like she was devil’s advocate or something.

Eleanor nodded. ‘Lists can…’

She was considering her words carefully, Connie could see, giving the conversation such concentration.

‘…be self-defeating,’ Eleanor went on. ‘Lists can become a way to lessen the importance of something. It’s too enormous to cope with, so we break it down into a list and then it has less power over us. And that’s shutting the door on what we have to deal with. Do you think?’

This was clearly Connie’s cue to reply. She nodded. She’d never thought of it that way before. Was writing a list of all the things she wanted in a man really just an avoidance tactic or a way of lessening the power of it in her head?
Here’s my funny list and, no, I don’t want a man anyway, it’s just a laugh, I’m happy the way I am.

‘But it can be useful too,’ she protested. ‘I like making lists, it clarifies ideas in my mind.’

‘Perhaps when it’s “things to do”, that sort of list,’ Eleanor said. ‘But for the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, can that be broken down into component parts? Also, is this list an avoidance tactic so you don’t have to face something you’d rather not?’

Connie’s mouth fell open but she shut it sharply.

‘Right,’ said Eleanor calmly. ‘Once you get it all firmly in your head what you r
eally
want from a relationship instead of the ideas left over from Keith, then you can start again.’ She decided to go off-piste, so to speak, and deliver one of the truths she’d forgotten until recently. ‘Life is about getting by, Connie. Surviving. It’s never perfect and we self-sabotage for any number of reasons, but if you try to understand all that about yourself, you can be happy.’